Have been thinking about Theresa lately, that she would have loved Gaga, our mutual fascination with coin tricks, how I wish I could hear her thoughts on beauty; we used to talk about being friends with dead people.

One Thursday last month, during the lunch hour at H.D. Woodson Senior High School, half a dozen teenage boys have gathered to eat pizza and talk about hollering at women. “From where I come from, you holler at a girl,” one student tells the group. “A girl can’t be too upset when a guy is paying attention to her.” “It depends on the type of girl and whether she has respect for herself,” another says. “Some girls will say, stop. But they like it, for real.” “If she’s wearing short shorts, booty shorts, short skirt, with the thong showing, she wants it,” another guy says. “Can’t blame it on the boy. She knows what she’s doing.

“But what if it’s hot out?” This is Kedrick Griffin. He’s here to play the 37-year-old devil’s advocate on a subject that’s generally considered normal behavior for a teenage boy in the District of Columbia. This exercise has come almost at the end of a year-long District program called the “Men of Strength” club—MOST Club, for short. The same pattern is repeated with groups of boys in public middle and high schools across the District: Come for the pizza, stay for the deconstructions of masculinity.

I can’t even begin to express how much I love this.

it is so so so important that people are doing this. i’m grateful to all programs like this.

Okay, I just want to say something, because a lot of people are reblogging this like a joke. As a person who has had an eating disorder while fat, I can GUARANTEE you that people treat you differently than a skinny person with an eating disorder. People encouraged me to keep going with my disordered behaviors, because they saw it as “such a good thing” that I was “losing all that bad weight.” This included doctors who sent me on my way despite my grandmother getting in their asses. I went through 4 doctors before whittling myself down. Many of my concerns were ignored despite having CLEAR signs of an eating disorder, because in reality, we don’t give a fuck about how fat people lose weight, as long as they lose it and stop being visible.